Fallout 3 Week: Gathering Good Karma

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Details from the last nice guy on earth.

By David Clayman

Most games have very clear distinctions between good and evil. The bad guys wear black, and the hero fights for the virginal princess on behalf of all that is right and just. The difference in Fallout 3 is that the world has already gone to hell. Good or bad, the people that had the misfortune of surviving nuclear war are now just trying to eke out an existence. Maintain a shred of humanity and try to help others and you'll be rewarded with Good Karma, work only for self gain and your bad karma will pile high. The choice is yours and the consequences are drastic.

As IGN's resident good Samaritan I played six hours of Fallout as a kind and giving person. IGN Xbox's Erik Brudvig took the opposite approach and will describe his horrible behavior in tomorrow's feature. For a preview of his experience, you can assume that every time I describe a good deed, Erik beat the hell out of someone with a baseball bat.

Immediately after exiting the vault, players are given the opportunity to take their character in either direction. The citizens of Washington DC are in such a sorry state of existence that playing as a decent human isn't a difficult choice to make. Upon entering the first run-down shack on the road toward Megaton I met up with a woman named Silver. She's a downtrodden ex-prostitute and her only request is that you don't broadcast her existence to the man she owes money to. I readily agreed, and subtly inquired if she still offered any of her old services. I didn't exactly help her, but I didn't extort or murder her either. I was well on my way to sainthood.

I left the shack to spread more joy when I came upon a derelict high school infested with raiders donning spiked armor and punk-rock hairdos. Maybe we'd be friends! The danger of a good vs. evil system is that good deeds can be dull in comparison to murder and mayhem. But this is hardly a problem in the world of Fallout. The raiders, ghouls and mutants that inhabit what's left of the nation's capital are decidedly evil. There's no bad karma penalty for shot-gunning a super mutant in the back of the head or taking a flame thrower to a raider encampment. Just staying alive is a tough job and brutally killing enemies is part of life whether you choose to be good or bad. I mopped the floor of the high school with the body parts of dead raiders, looted their storage room, and discovered their plans to dynamite into the vault I had recently emerged from. All while maintaining my sunny disposition and good karma.

The next stop was Megaton. At this point we've all heard about the first big choice between good and evil which is the fate of this ramshackle town built around an unexploded nuclear device. Some locals worship the bomb, others just try to steer clear of it, but only you have the power to detonate or disarm the hazard. In Bethesda's early demos they showed us what happens when players decide cash is more important than human lives and blow Megaton into the stratosphere. This time around we had the chance to experience the benefits of keeping the town on the map.

Exploding mole rats will not hurt your karma.

Not only did I save the inhabitants of the city, but I offered to do it for free. Instead of arming the bomb I swallowed some mentats, boosted my intelligence, and removed the nuclear threat. Lucas Simms, the local lawman, thanked me and granted me the deed to a house in Megaton and citizenship. It turns out having a place to rest my head had numerous benefits. The house comes with a scattering of old furniture and Wadsworth, your robotic butler. He offers purified water (health), haircuts, and even tells jokes when his humor circuits are fully charged. The mechanical salon offers 18 different hair styles and a bevy of different facial hair options including beards with names like "the swashbuckler" and "lady's man." Hair color is managed by color sliders, allowing for near-infinite combinations.